ISOTOPIC COMPOSITION OF COSMIC RAYS: RESULTS FROM THE COSMIC RAY ISOTOPE SPECTROMETER ON THE ACE SPACECRAFT

Abstract

Over the past seven years the Cosmic Ray Isotope Spectrometer (CRIS) on the ACE spacecraft has returned data with an unprecedented combination of excellent mass resolution and high statistics, describing the isotopic composition of elements from lithium through nickel in the energy interval ~ 50 to 500 MeV/nucleon. These data have demonstrated: * The time between nucleosynthesis and acceleration of the cosmic-ray nuclei is at least 105 years. The supernova in which nucleosynthesis takes place is thus not the same supernova that accelerates a heavy nucleus to cosmic-ray energy. * The mean confinement time of cosmic rays in the Galaxy is 15 Myr. * The isotopic composition of the cosmic-ray source is remarkably similar to that of solar system. The deviations that are observed, particularly at 22 Ne and 58 Fe , are consistent with a model in which the cosmic-ray source is OB associations in which the interstellar medium has solar-system composition enriched by roughly 20% admixture of ejecta from Wolf-Rayet stars and supernovae. * Cosmic-ray secondaries that decay only by electron capture provide direct evidence for energy loss of cosmic rays as they penetrate the solar system. This invited overview paper at ECRS 19 was largely the same as an invited paper presented a month earlier at the 8th Nuclei in the Cosmos Conference in Vancouver. The proceedings of that conference will be published shortly by Elsevier as a special edition of Nuclear Physics A. For further summary of results from CRIS, the reader is referred to URL 〈〉 and links on that page to CRIS and to Science News.